There is certainly a difference, yes, but not one of kind -- more one of degree. Instead of asking the still unresolved metaphysical question 'do people make choices? yes or no?' or 'is there such a thing as free will?', I would submit that it is more productive to ask the normative question "to what extent ought this person's 'choice' count as his or hers?"
Even though children, the insane, and the mentally retarded can all be said to make "choices," it is more or less agreed that these choices don't count as theirs. If a child or an insane person commits a crime, we attribute the crime to youth or insanity -- not to the person him or herself. In these cases we say that something foreign ( e.g., mental illness) makes the 'choice.' But why should we stop with youth, insanity and mental retardation? Why shouldn't we count poverty too (at least to some extent)?
Of course, there might be good reasons to count some people's choices as "theirs" but not others, but these are ethical and political value judgments. To pretend otherwise strikes me as a little naive.
[WS:] It is indeed a good question, albeit the concept of "free will" does not belong there. It is an abstraction of little clarity and analytical value, usually thrown into a debate as a monkey wrench or a red herring. The issue of choice can be debated without any references to the concept of will - and I would like to draw your, and everyone else's attention to the fact that I never mentioned that word in my postings. It was imputed to me by others to create a straw man out of my argument, I presume.
As I understand it, your question of the 'ownership' of choice has two aspects. The first aspect is to what the degree the locus of decision making and action objectively rests with a decision maker and how much of it rests in his/her environment. The second aspect is to what degree people (both the decision maker and those in his/her environment) recognize how the locus of decision making is actually split between the decision maker and his/her environment.
In most life circumstances the locus of decision making is split between the individual and the environment, albeit it shifts considerably between these two sides depending on the circumstances. It is indeed very rare that the individual has either no choice at all (e.g. if he is pushed from a bridge) and even more rare, if at all possible, that he/she at will with no input from the environment (this impossible situation would be considered "free will" I guess). In most life situations, an individual can and does make choices, albeit the alternatives are not equal in terms of their cost, including transaction costs. For example, everyone in the US can pursue university education, albeit for people with learning disabilities or lower socio-economic status the cost of making that choice will be considerably higher than the cost of a similar choice made by someone with a high scholastic aptitude or coming from higher socio-economic background. But the choice is there for almost everyone willing to bear the cost - unlike for example in many European countries that place age limits on university admissions.
However, the actual locus of decision making can be substantially distorted by subjective perceptions that selectively discount either the constraints in the environment or the human agency. That is to say, people may selectively focus on human agency and discount or disregard the environmental constraints, or do the opposite - focus on the environment and forget the human agency. Such perceptions are a matter of cognitive framing rather than deliberate deviousness. People acquire different cognitive frames through socialization, and they simply see things differently through these frames - just as changing the lenses makes different things appear larger or smaller. In the individualist frame, individual characteristics and motives receive a much greater weight that environment constraints, which tend to be minimized or altogether ignored. In the structuralist frame, by contrast, the attention is focused on the environmental factors and constraints, while the individual characteristics are minimized or ignored.
Since cognitive frames are a result of socialization and thus taken for granted - this makes the discussion of this issue very difficult. People do not like their frames and assumptions being questioned, and become agitated and aggressive when someone does that - as Harold Garfinkel's "breaching experiments" demonstrated. What is more, the adoption of different frames is also selective, and often ideologically or culturally motivated. For example, liberals may selectively adopt the individualist frame to the upper echelons of society, and a structuralist one to the underclass, while conservatives my doe the exact opposite. More selective use of framing is also frequent, e.g. conservatives use the individualist frame when talking about failures of the underclass while adopting a structuralist frame when talking about their success stories (i.e. if they did something bad, it is their own choice and thus fault, but if they did something good, it is because someone else helped them or made them do it). Of course, liberals would do the exact opposite.
Observing this process of cognitive framing the choices different people make and the emotions it generates can be quite instructive and even amusing, especially for those with analytical inclinations. However, people generally get annoyed by it, because it questions their own assumptions and frames.
In conclusion, the issue of the 'ownership of choice' that you raise does not seem solvable. While it is possible to determine or approximate how much of a choice an individual objectively has is a particular situation, this picture will almost certainly be distorted by different cognitive framing, which in turn is culturally, ideologically or politically motivated. Since people are generally reluctant to abandon their cognitive frames, especially that these frames appear to be 'confirmed' by reality ("I can see it!") - this issue will always provide ammunition to cultural and ideological wars.
Wojtek
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